I’m a non-believer with digital camera before I got this camera. When my daughter was born last year, I vow to take pictures of her every single day. Which I did follow though to my promise, except it was too much for me to drop off the film and wait for it to come back. I did some reasearch online and decide to find a camera that works more like a 35mm slr like I’m used shooting with in my studio. Finally I brought this camera and 2 64mb memorie sticks and a extra battery. After I start shooting with it, I thought I’ll never use another 35mm film camera again. It was so easy to use, very similar to the newer style of film based camera. It can be complete manually or automatic. Since it has a 62mm filter ring, it was easy to fit various filters or cokin system on there to have color correction or other special effects. I’ve used that camera for freelance work and also for shooting wedding photography. The only complaint I have is that I don’t like the auto-focus they have on the camera. It takes too long and don’t work that well. But this makes a great studio camera as well as for novice to learn how to use.
One of it’s best option is you could choose to have the image saved as tiff or jpeg on the camera, and you could choose 4 different grades of quality for the image. This allows you to have range from 15 photos to 800 photos on a 64mb memory stick. I use tiff format to shoot because it gives you uncompress format that is great for printing.
After owning this camera for nearly a year now, there was times I thought about upgrading my camera. But every time I went down to do research on other cameras, I can not find any of them that I like more than this. I got this whole outfit with 2 extra memories stick and a extra batteries for only 1300 USD. The only 2 cameras out there I find can compare to this camera is the Olympus E10 and Nikon D1. Except they are about 2 or 3 times the price of this Sony camera.
For this camera, you have the option using the viewfinder or using the LCD screen. You could also use it’s remote to take family photo or self-portrait. Camera very much feel like a 35mm slr camera, so if you are familiar with one of those, you’ll have no problem with this camera.
Right now I’m researching about the filter I can put in front of this camera that would shoot digital infrared photography.
It’s a year old now, so I’m sure there will be better ones that will come out in the near future, but we can say that for almost anything. So far the pro-unit from Sony and the highest grade from Sony. The newer CDR digital camera from Sony has a lot of problem and could not even compare to this one.